An alumnus of Berlinale Talents and NYU Tisch Graduate Film program, Guo Shang-Sing writes, directs, and produces numerous award-winning shorts to his credit, including the boy trilogy Swingin’ (2020), Kong Peh Tshat or: How I Learned to Tell a Lie (2012) and Only Meal of the Day (2010).

Swingin’ tells a story about Qiu Qiu a sixth-grader who makes his way proving to his bullying peers that he is different from his gay dads. The film received both Taiwan Domestic Film Guidance Fund and Kaohsiung Shots Fund; won the Grand Jury Award for the Best Narrative Short at Houston Asian American Pacific Islander Film Festival in the USA. The film traveled to festivals worldwide.

Kong Peh Tshat or: How I Learned to Tell a Lie tells a story about Didi, a country boy wrongly accused of theft and detained, struggling and losing his innocence as a result of his encounters with oppressiveness of the real world: class, law and sexuality. The film received both Taiwan Domestic Film Guidance Fund and Taitung Film Fund; won Jury Special Mention in Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, Carta Giovani Award in Sardinia Film Festival in Italy and competed in the festivals including Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in France.

At NYU, Guo received the Tisch School of the Arts Scholarships and Dalio Family Foundation Scholarship for Excellence; Haig Manoogian Award for his thesis film Only Meal of the Day, a story about Bird, a noodle vendor who witnesses a six-year-old beggar boy and his mom begging from a foreign couple that fights over whether they should give money or food to the boy in rural Thailand. It was selected in San Francisco and New York Asian American International Film Festivals as well as Bangkok and Kaohsiung festivals.

Apart from his film career, Guo enjoys acting and directing for theatre. Cross-Border Culture and Education Foundation sponsored his stage directing Variations on the Dissociative Identity Disorder of a Boy (2004). The National Culture and Arts Foundation sponsored his Millennium Countdown (2002).

He played on stage for Muzi Playground, Rive-Gauche Theatre Group, Assignment Theatre and Allstar Theatre. He played the tragic role Macbeth in Shakespeare’s Macbeth translated by Fang Ping, an audio book published by Ecus Publishing House in 2002.

He voice acted the leading role in Joe Hsieh’s Night Bus that won the Jury Award for Best Short Animation at Sundance Film Festival in 2022.

Guo was formerly a full-time faculty member of the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Hsuan Chuang University; the Department of Radio, Television and Film at Shih Hsin University where he spent over 2,000 hours running acting, screenwriting and directing workshops. He is currently an adjunct lecturer at the Department of Filmmaking at Taipei National University of the Arts.

© GUO SHANG SING.